‘Hannibal’ Series Premiere, ‘Aperitif’: TV Recap

Someone is abducting young women in Minnesota. Eight have been taken so far, and they all look very similar. But why? What does their abductor and probable killer want with them? What need do they fulfill?

To find out, the FBI’s behavioral science division chief, Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne), turns to Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), a lecturer at the FBI academy who specializes in making in-depth profiles of killers. Graham is gifted (or cursed, depending on how you see it) with pure empathy, meaning he can put himself in the point of view of a killer, depending only on the evidence at hand. Instead of just telling us about it, though, NBC’s gory new prequel series “Hannibal” immerses the audience in Graham’s talent with some nifty-looking effects. It also helps that Dancy plays Graham as a man perpetually on the edge of psychological collapse and uneasy in social situations. His only solace, it appears, comes from rescuing and keeping stray dogs.

The pressure begins to get to Graham as Crawford, against the warnings of psychologist and consultant Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas), involves Graham more fully in the case of the abducted young women. Graham’s deductions lead him to discover the body of the latest victim in her bedroom, which is a deviation from the pattern. The investigator determines that the killer returned her out of a sense of “apology.” She’s dead, but it turns out she has deer antler residue on her wounds, as if the killer was attempting to help her heal. The killer, Graham says, is operating out of a warped sense of “love.” Two more things become evident in the investigation of the body: There are unique metal shavings present, and the killer has inspected her liver, which is cancerous. The killer wanted to eat her liver, but the sickness turned him away.

A killer who eats human liver? That sounds like a perfect segue to the introduction of the show’s namesake, the psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen), a dandy dresser with some, shall we say, exotic tastes in cuisine. If you’ve read Thomas Harris’ novels about Lecter or have seen any of the movies, particularly “Manhunter,” “Red Dragon” and “The Silence of the Lambs,” you know where Lecter will end up. But this show is concerned with how he ends up there as well as the development of his complicated relationship with Graham, and so when we meet the good doctor, he’s a legitimate psychiatrist whose practice involves him helping out blubbering neurotics as well as criminal investigators. When Graham hits a wall in his investigation of the Minnesota killer, Crawford turns to Lecter to help Graham realize his potential.

It’s fascination at first sight when Lecter meets Graham. The doctor finds that he has so much in common with the investigator, who bristles at Lecter’s probing questions and overtures toward friendship. (He even makes Graham breakfast. Don’t ask what’s in the sausage.) But Lecter’s “help” doesn’t stop at advice or home cooking. As the audience knows, the psychiatrist is quite an accomplished killer and cannibal in his own right, so he utilizes his own unique set of gifts to help Graham “see” the killer.

Another victim is found in Minnesota, only this time, the young woman is mounted naked on a set of deer antlers in the middle of a field, and her lungs are missing. To untrained eyes, this looks like the same killer might be evolving in his methods. But to Graham, it’s an obvious and grotesque parody of the previous killings. It’s a “negative image” of what the killer, now dubbed the “Minnesota Shrike,” had been doing. It all snaps together for Graham, then: This new killer, a nearly impossible-to-read sadist, thought of his victim as a “pig,” whereas the killer originally under investigation thought of the girls as his daughter. Graham determines that the killer fears “losing” his daughter, and so he’s been killing and eating girls who resemble his daughter in a twisted attempt to keep her with him. And now, thanks to Lecter’s surreptitious show-and-tell (which also provides him with the makings of a meal), Graham and the FBI have enough information to find the killer: A man who works with metals, probably on a construction site in Minnesota, and who has a daughter in her late teens or early 20s.

This leads Graham and Lecter to Garrett Jacob Hobbs, a name that should be familiar to people who have read “Red Dragon.” But nothing’s ever that easy when you have Hannibal Lecter on your team. Just for his personal amusement, it seems, Lecter places an anonymous call to Hobbs to tip him off that the authorities are coming. When Graham and Lecter get to the Hobbs house, the killer pushes a woman, apparently his wife, out of the door and bleeding to death. Graham busts in to find Hobbs with a knife to his daughter’s throat, and as starts to slash her, Graham shoots him and puts him down. As Hobbs, dying, whispers to Graham, “Do you see?” Lecter enters to tend to Hobbs’ daughter, who is gushing blood.

There is no going back for the blood-spattered Graham now. He’s in too deep, and, unbeknownst to him, he’s in the hands of an evil genius who’s hiding behind a veneer of gentility, taste, professionalism and compassion.